One of the most fundamental routines in a chemical laboratory is to prepare samples from dry powdered materials. Often times, conventional powder dispensing systems are designed around the assumption that a relatively large amount of powder is available for automatic sampling. These conventional systems include screw, rotary, vibratory, roll, shaker and revolving plate feeders where the designs of such systems are mainly focused on a large quantity of bulk powder materials to be continually dispensed into feed lines or vials. As such, these automatic devices are not generally designed to be used in dispensing of a small quantity of powder materials or in situations where powder materials are maintained within a small vial. Moreover, the absence of an automatic grinder in these conventional setups makes it even more difficult to perform sampling of granular bulk materials with different granular sizes since there is no automatic system available to grind such granular bulk materials into powders prior to sampling.
Furthermore, almost all errors in sampling process are associated with human or pre-analytical processing errors where preparation and adjusting sampling by hand permit upfront human error in wasting and contaminating materials to occur at various sample collection sites and laboratories. As such, the entire process can lead to increase in sampling time and labor intensity, and thus cost inefficiency.
With all these shortcomings, there remains a need to develop an improved automatic gravimetric sampling device that provides an easier and more efficient means for weighing and grinding solid specimen of all kinds and all measures without being limited to a specific and predetermined weight and granular size, while maintaining satisfactory accuracy and safety as well as being timely and cost effective. Such device can also prevent a working environment from being contaminated and avoid individuals from being subjected to prolong exposure to hazardous chemicals.
Accordingly, the present disclosure addresses providing an improved apparatus and method for automatic gravimetric sampling solids with flexibility to sampling weight and granular size, while offering a safe and reliable sampling process in a timely and cost-effective fashion.